Our Research

Research capabilities

ISSR’s research interests are wide-ranging and our work is underpinned by a commitment to building the best possible knowledge to improve economic and social wellbeing for individuals, households, communities and regions in Australia and internationally. Our multidisciplinary research capabilities include:

Applied social science research

Government policy and program evaluation

Use of social statistics and large data sets

Survey research and research training

Advanced text analytics

Randomized field experiments

Research clusters

We address our research interests by focusing on ten themes or research clusters:

Many of our researchers are also part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre), which is based in ISSR and has nodes has nodes at The University of Western Australia, The University of Melbourne and The University of Sydney.

The Centre's aims are to:

discover the principal causes or mechanisms underlying the transmission of social disadvantage

investigate which policies and practices work in preventing and reducing deep and persistent disadvantage

develop and trial solutions that will reduce the transmission of disadvantage across generations

identify the effects of disadvantage where human capability is reduced, and the compounding effects that see disadvantaged people more likely to face future hardship

provide policy advice and research evidence to agencies that deliver human services

build capacity through productive links with the researchers, collaborators and partners

provide research training and mentor graduate students and early career researchers.